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Municipalities investigate consolidation for fire & EMS
The Chicago Tribune recently published an article focusing on a study aimed at exploring the potential for consolidating fire and emergency medical services (EMS) among the Highwood, Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff fire departments. This move comes amid growing interest nationwide to reduce costs through collaborative efforts.
According to the article, these four communities are anticipated to establish a task force in early 2013 to explore cost-saving strategies via collaboration—potentially leading to the unification of fire protection and emergency medical services for their combined population of around 60,000 residents. A study conducted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) estimates that adopting this national trend toward consolidation could yield annual savings ranging from $1 million to $1.8 million.
Lake Forest currently handles its own fire/EMS and police dispatch services while also managing Lake Bluff's century-old volunteer fire department and providing ambulance services to it. On the other hand, Highwood outsources its police dispatch to Lake Forest and relies on Regional Emergency Dispatch (RED) in Northbrook for fire and EMS support. Highland Park, which experiences close to 2,000 fire/EMS calls per year, manages all its public safety communications independently.
One alternative being considered is contracting with an established universal dispatch center like Northbrook’s Regional Emergency Dispatch. Another possibility involves centralizing fire, EMS, and police dispatch under one roof. Leonard Matarese, director of research and project development at the ICMA Center for Public Safety Management, examined the fire and EMS requirements of these four jurisdictions. He noted that the traditional approach has been to maintain consistent staffing levels for fire and EMS around the clock. However, recent global trends suggest that workloads and demand for these services fluctuate throughout the day and week. For instance, fires and EMS calls tend to peak during daytime hours and decline significantly after 9 or 10 p.m.
The ICMA study outlines three main options regarding firefighting and emergency medical services: "functional consolidation," where jurisdictions cooperate on shared services but remain independent entities; "operational consolidation," which keeps legal separations intact while merging operations and administration into a unified agency; and "full consolidation," merging the four fire departments into one entity where jurisdictional lines blur and all service requests are handled as single functions. The study predicts that functional and operational consolidations might save participating members between $950,000 and $1.5 million annually, whereas full consolidation could result in savings between $1.4 million and $1.95 million.
Matarese highlighted that political considerations, financial implications, labor contracts, and retirement systems often pose significant challenges in such initiatives. Nevertheless, these four cities already exhibit considerable levels of shared resources, cooperative ventures, and functional consolidation. They also engage in joint procurement and standardization of equipment.
For more detailed information, you can read the full article [here].